Geniza Lab

Recto/verso: recto

Legal testimony. Location: Fustat. Dated: 1070 CE. Regarding the collection of a debt owed by Hillel b. Menashshe to the judge Avraham b. Natan. After a number of court sessions an agreement was reached, but Avraham was unable to collect the balance of the debt due to travel. He sent his uncle Ṣedaqa b. Mevorakh to collect the remainder of the debt, part of which has already been collected. The parties may have disagreed about the remaining amount of the debt because some of it was equity in one or more joint enterprise (kull mu‘āmala), initiated by Natan (Avraham’s father). It fell to Hillel to repay this debt, and a penalty clause is included should he fail to repay, indicating that Ṣedaqa didn't actually collect the total, but a portion plus an assurance of the remainder. Once Ṣedaqa collected payment from Hillel, the latter was cleared of further obligations. The missing portion of the document likely specified the amount of this payment, as well as containing the closing formulae and the witnesses’ signatures. The cause of the dispute may have been a disagreement over valuation of partnership assets, or over the terms of the partnership itself. Lieberman notes that if Avraham’s business relationships with Hillel had spanned a number of partnerships, then the disagreement could have been about the division of partnership profits (rather than the value of these profits). Abraham held a debt document (kitāb dayn), suggesting that the terms of an initial loan to Hillel and perhaps the terms of the mu‘āmala itself were laid out, in which case the dispute could be over the valuation of partnership assets. (Information from Lieberman, "A Partnership Culture," 1-2)